The pulse crop industry in Saskatchewan has grown substantially in the past few decades. This year, a record 5.3 million lentil acres were planted in the province. The Regina Leader-Post is taking an in-depth look into this industry, with a four-part series entitled The Power of Pulses.

Murad Al-Katib knew that change was coming to the pulse industry in Saskatchewan and he wanted to be part of it.

“I saw the transformation coming but I also believed that we needed a value-added processing infrastructure to support it,” said Al-Katib, who is president and CEO of AGT Foods and Ingredients.

In 2001, he founded SaskCan Pulse Trading out of his basement in Regina — which has now became one of the largest pulse-processing companies in the world.

The pulse industry in Saskatchewan is not just the producers who grow the crops; it’s also the companies that buy and process the crops.

“You have to have the kind of innovative and marketing-savvy producers in Saskatchewan, and processors and exporters who also recognize the opportunity and apply their agricultural and business acumen to grow that industry,” said Chris Dekker, president and CEO of Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership (STEP).

AGT is one of the best known success stories of the Saskatchewan pulse processing industry. In fact, Al-Katib had been working with STEP when he met the Arslan family in Turkey which owned the Arbel Group.

“Arbel had a problem with Canadian quality. The lentil industry was very much in its infancy stage then and the grading standards and the quality of the product that was being received by Turkey (reflected that). When they went to split the lentils they were actually having a lot of waste and a lot of loss,” Al-Katib said.

The Arslan family agreed to fund Al-Katib in order to start SaskCan. In 2009, Alliance Grain Traders (previously SaskCan) bought the Arbel Group. The company was still run by the same management team but became larger by making the two companies one. The acquisition also included the Arbella Pasta brand in Turkey.

“The partnership with Arbel and with the Arslan family has been a critical element of the success of AGT,” Al-Katib said. “It was important also to farmers to have international market access but also to feel comfortable that we were building a Canadian company here.”

Alliance Grain Traders became AGT Foods and Ingredients in 2014. It now has 42 facilities across the world and distributes products to 120 countries around the world with offices in Turkey, Russia and Myanmar.

“Regina remains the global head office. Here we are running a vertically integrated global company in five continents of operation,” Al-Katib said.

AGT is a publicly owned and traded company. In 2015, AGT posted $1.7 billion in sales internationally, which is up from $1.4 billion in 2014.

There are also privately owned processing companies in Saskatchewan such as Simpson Seeds.

The company was founded in 1979 when the Simpson family decided to start a seed-cleaning business to keep themselves busy over the winter months when they weren’t farming. During the 1980s, the pulse industry in Saskatchewan began to grow.

“As the industry grew, we started to make direct contact with international buyers and then started to market and trade and export directly in the ’90s,” said Elyce Simpson Fraser, director of business development and marketing at Simpson Seeds.

Simpson Seeds mainly deals with lentils and canary seed. It operates three facilities, with two in Moose Jaw including one at the original Simpson family farm site and a rail site with two cleaning lines and a splitting line. It has another facility in Swift Current currently under construction that will include two plants when finished.

“We process it and bag it. A lot of it goes in our branded bag. Some does go in a plain bag or the cobranded bag,” Simpson Fraser said, adding that it exports to just over 80 countries currently.

Simpson Seeds is now the largest privately owned processing company in Saskatchewan.

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